Oil refineries are vital to the world economy and at the same time major consumers of energy. Petroleum refineries are under increased pressure to minimize emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide to comply with the upcoming more strict environmental regulations. Energy efficiency optimization is a fast track solution to greenhouse gas emissions reduction due to its impact on energy consumption at the source.
Heat exchangers play a major role in crude oil refineries in energy saving, in general. Distillation is the main consumer of energy in an oil refinery. Crude distillation is a primary processing operation in refineries throughout the world and requires heat, steam and cooling to operate. The crude distillation unit (CDU), which consists of both an atmospheric distillation unit and a vacuum distillation unit, is not the most energy-intensive unit in the oil refinery; however, in terms of energy usage per unit volume (that is, energy per barrel processed), every barrel of crude oil processed in the oil refinery passes through the CDU.